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Rate My JIL, Sept 15 List:

Sup! I don’t have time to write an intro this week! You get this!

Auburn. This is a perfectly good R1 job (though for R1s its 3-2 teaching load is “high”), and they want a “generalist” which is pretty much like saying “good luck trying to figure out what we want, fuckface,” but that’s fine too, I guess. My main issue with jobs like these is that anyone who teaches there will live the R1 Conundrum, which is that they’ll be expected to produce crazy amounts of high-quality research whilst teaching students who would rather be at the football game or are possibly already at the football game. This doesn’t mean that there are no dedicated undergrads at Auburn; I’m sure there are many. But across the big R1 spectrum I really think this duality persists, and for that reason, this is not a job that I, personally, would want (HINT HINT). Also, I’m guessing they will probably hire “too high” (i.e. someone from Princeton) who will use the place as a stepping stone and feel above it for however many (or few) years they’re there, and then we’ll be seeing this exact ad all over again in 2020.

Baylor. Oh for fuck’s sake, I don’t want to deal with this piece of shit ad to work with ultra-right-wing Evangelical hypocrites, do you? Even better: This is an outside chair search. So, for all of you full professors of German who also happen to be right-wing Evangelical hypocrites, HERE IS THE JOB FOR YOU. Do these people know that John Ellis is 9000 years old? Maybe Rachel Fulton Brown can apply; Anglo-Saxon is basically German, after all.

Columbia. Now this is an interesting job. This is a non-tenure-track more-or-less permanent lectureship that is essentially running the German language program. You see very few language-program coordinator positions at the tenure track level these days (unless it’s a PhD program in second-language acquisition, but sometimes not even then!), and this is because many years ago, the Literature People decided they were intellectually superior to the Language People, and marginalized the Language People, and administrations causalized their workforce, and then suddenly you have places like UIC offering $28,000 a year. This is not a bad job, but on principle it should be tenure-track. SLA research is no less important to the field than literature research—in fact, for many reasons I’d actually say it’s more important to the field. I know that the department at Columbia has no control over the types of hires they get (fun fact: that department offered me an NTT job once long ago, and I turned it down because I am a dipshit!), but it still depresses the shit out of me that even at the highest level possible, Language People can’t get their due. (Also, she said for no reason, I am not qualified for this job.)

University of British Columbia. I preemptively congratulate the Canadian and/or native German who is going to get this job. Don’t make me waste my dumb-ass American time applying for this job, K?

University of Chicago. Ooh, Cal, ooh. Guess there’s a new marquee job on the block this cycle, motherfuckers. And there’s no reason not to think this position won’t actually be FILLED (how’s THAT for as many negatives as one person can fit into one weird sentence?). Cal, ya burnt. Pros: David Wellbery, who is super-awesome and also, I heard, a sorcerer; hella prestige; you’ll get to live near my Aunt Sarah and Uncle Joe. Cons: Your new colleagues will include alt-right troll Rachel Fulton Brown, inveterate man-child Brian Leiter, and deans who like to make sure you know you’re NEVER gonna get trigger-warned (which is in itself a sort of trigger warning, sucka). Congrats in advance to the mid-career assistant professor with a Princeton PhD currently finishing their third book at a top-rated R1 who gets this job.

VOTE, BITCHES! And unless you’re German, you can tell everyone how you voted. too.

Canadians love to hire Americans–it makes us feel less intellectually inferior. (Recent hire to the Canadian Harvard equivalent in my subfield had fancy Duke postdoc. Committees love that shit.) Pro: universal healthcare and the ocean. Con: no one can afford to buy a place in Vancouver like, ever, that isn’t the size of a shoebox.

Are you sure about those cancelled Cal German searches? I can only remember one search in recent years (in 2014), which resulted in an appointment. The person has since left, which is why they’re doing the current search.
Chicago, on the other hand, has had a ton of cancelled searches in the past three years (at the German dept., too!), which is why a number of those mid-career Princeton grads are not getting their hopes up – knowing full well that if the search did go through, the chosen one would be among them.